


In the Moondust

by kindoflike



Series: It's very brief [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/F, Lexa POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-03-19 21:22:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3624732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindoflike/pseuds/kindoflike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Café is warm and the coffee is good but that is not why you come back.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As for where exactly these fit between the moments of 'All I want', well that is up to you.

The wind is whipping at your hair and stinging at your eyes. The sun shines but it's weak and useless. 

A burst of warmth hits your face and the rich smell of coffee fills your nostrils as someone opens the door of a Café just in the moment that you walk past. It makes you hesitate, the promise of heat for your insides as well as your blue fingers. Another gust of wind shakes the trees and it’s doesn’t take you long to step backwards and inside the door. 

\--

The Café is warm and the coffee is good but that is not why you come back. 

\--

“It’s Lexa, right?” 

“That it is.’

“Well, in the spirit of fairness, my name is Clarke. And before you ask, I am not secretly superman. My dad was… 

Her breathe hitches and you know it well, the way past tense can startle your chest. But her eyes do not dull and her mouth turns crooked only seconds later. She continues

“…a big science fiction fan. Plus, it means I’m much more likely to get people to consider my resume…although that's yet to really take off.’ 

It’s the bravest thing you’ve ever seen.

\-- 

Each week you walk to the café with your computer heavy in a backpack and  
you take a seat with every intention of working through the shoulder bag of case files.

But then the air is filled with her voice: the kind questions she asks everyone, the reeling off of coffee types and sizes, the various permutations of not a problem, no worries, no trouble, yes, of course, and the way she seems to mean it every time. 

You have every intention of working but when you glance over at her, her smile is waiting. 

\--

You come in on a Thursday. 

The door barely closes behind you when you hear a shout 

“Griffin! Tall double shot is here!’ 

You look over to the counter to see Raven leaning against it with a smirk on her face. 

“She’ll be right out’

You don’t get a chance to defend yourself against her wink because Clarke barges out from the kitchen door and she’s breathing like she’d been running and she’s grinning all creasy like and she pauses to catch a breathe and you feel so many things when you see her but Raven’s eyes are prickling and the only words you have are 

“Actually, I think I’ll have a dash of milk today’  
\--

You’ve never thought of yourself as particularly funny. 

It’s never been something you aspired to, never something people associated with your name. You were always content with smart or pleasantly surprised by the occasional synonym for good looking. 

And yet, when you lean on a table or linger by the counter, you wish you’d paid more attention to the mechanics of humor, just so you could figure out sure-fire ways to see Clarke throw her head back and let out that rumbling laugh that makes you dizzy. 

\--

“Wait, you asked her out?’ 

You know Gus has stopped half way through getting drinks out of the fridge and is looking at you in disbelief. But you keep your eyes on the television when you say

“Always the tone of surprise’ 

You hear him laugh as he opens the caps of two bottles of beer and carries them over to where you are sitting on the couch. He hands you one and you nod in thanks before taking a sip and letting the familiar fizz slide down your throat. He drinks too and for a moment you think maybe that will be the end of it. Then his smile fades and he swallows and says

“It’s just that you haven’t…I mean, since Costia…’ 

It doesn’t make you flinch, her name. Not as much as it used to, anyway.  
He doesn’t wait for you to speak, just lets a moment of mutual acknowledgement pass between you. He doesn’t expect anything from you and for that, you are grateful. There isn’t anything new to be said about all that, anyway. 

The moment passes and he swigs his beer, smiles and says, in that cheeky way that he has

“Well her coffee must be pretty great, then’ 

\--

You want to kiss her soft. You want to feel her soft cheek against yours and tangle your hands in her hair, map the knots of her spine with your fingertips. 

You want to kiss her hard. You want to taste her neck with your lips and teeth and slam her hips against your own and make her gasp, tremble underneath you. 

And when you do, she kisses you back soft and hard and just for a moment everything else beyond that is blurred and smeared. 

But you’ve never been good at wanting and it frightens you. 

\--

“I don’t think Octavia likes me very much.’ 

‘It doesn’t matter.’

“So it’s true.’ 

“So what if it is?” 

“Well, did she say why?’ 

“She thinks you’re….It really doesn't matter.’ 

“Clarke.’ 

“I like you, Lexa. Everything else is unimportant.’

 

\--

She wakes so early. 

In the whole time you’ve been sleeping beside her, never once have you been the first to stir. 

She teases you in the mornings, knows it takes time for the fog and the haze to fade. She kisses your cheek, hands you coffee and fastens your top button. She thinks she’s helping you get ready but in actual fact, she just makes it harder and harder to walk out the door. 

\--

It’s a Wednesday afternoon and they have to replace all the carpets in the office so Anya says you can all take the afternoon off. You call Clarke just to tell her not to bother meeting you later at the Chinese restaurant downtown and she says ‘ Wait, I’m leaving work now, meet me at the Cinema on John street’ 

The film, having been the only one showing this afternoon, is terrible. About half way through, when the male protagonist and his damsel in distress get caught up in a not even remotely suspenseful car chase, Clarke pushes up the armrest and shifts towards you. You’re still watching the screen but she takes your hand and so you glance at her and _oh_

You spend the rest of the film making out in the dark. 

So, it hadn’t been a complete waste of money. 

\--

Sometimes, you feel like you and Clarke are from completely different worlds. 

You are night where she is morning, she is hot when you are cold. But sometimes you look in her eyes and see the same storm. 

\--

Your back is already pressed against the table and you lean further into it as you breath in deeply, bite your lip and try and collect your thoughts. 

Her voice had been low, had reminded you of metal and her blue eyes had flashed violently. She’s still wrong, you still think she’s wrong, but that doesn’t mean you meant it at all when you told her to leave. 

The slamming of the door echoes through the air. 

You breathe in, out, in, out and one more time. 

And then, you do the only thing that there is to be done. 

You pick up your jacket and the keys to the apartment and you go and find her.


	2. Chapter 2

_And I long to hear your voice but still I make the choice_  
(To bury my love, in the moondust)  
\- Jaymes Young.  
\--

You are part of a team. There are six of you who work for Anya and help her build the cases, do the countless readings and administration and attempt to be noticed by her as someone of potential. 

You’re part of a team and yet, when Anya walks into the meeting room and her face is grave, you feel completely alone in your defeat. 

Everyone else has gone home and you’re sitting at your desk, staring at a stack of reports. The words pass your eyes without meaning a thing. 

An hour before, Anya had come to see you as you’d had been pouring over the case details, searching for anything that could explain. She closed the office door and said 

“I know how invested you were in this one, Lexa. But iring yourself with questions already asked and answered is a waste of energy.’ 

It had been a long day, such a long day, and you’re voice had somehow sounded both petulant and weary. 

“He was guilty, Anya’ 

Her dark eyes held no reassurance, no encouragement or explanation. They held only pity, maybe for a moment there was a glint of understanding. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Don’t be late.’ 

With that, she had left you alone in the empty office. 

You stay at your desk in the half darkness for another hour or maybe two. There comes a point where your head is tight from all the thinking, where your back and legs ache and beg you to move. 

For a moment, you think about calling Clarke, yearn for her voice and the promise of blue eyes and soft hands. 

But you tuck your phone back in your pocket and begin the long walk home. 

You are alone in your defeat. 

 

\--

You’d been practicing the words, rolling them around on your tongue, studying the way they sounded in the air. You’d been trying out different phrasings, just to be sure

“Do you want to move in together?’ 

“What do you think about living together?” 

“So Gus has been talking about finding his own place and I was thinking that...’

In the end, you never get the chance to hear her answer. You tell yourself it might not have been yes, anyway. 

\--

You’ve been on a high for the last few days, receiving call after call and email after email of praise and congratulations. A once in a life time opportunity, they all said. You’ve earned this, they all said. 

All the hours upon hours of work finally amounted to this, this resounding sense of accomplishment, of moving forward and up and finally getting somewhere. It made your lungs expand. 

You think of your parents, their proud grins and warm hugs. You think of Anya, her quirked lip and gentle handshake. You think of Clarke - 

“ So, you accept the international placement?’ 

His voice is loud in your ear and you’ve never been more glad to be alone in your cupboard sized office than right now. It would be disastrous if anyone saw the way you have to swallow and how your hand shakes, just once, before you straighten your spine and reply

“Yes, of course, Mr Emerson’ 

Your lungs expand again. 

\--

Not a lot of people understand. They think you are doing this for money or for accolades or for family honour. 

Most people don’t understand that this is not something you gained or acquired, rather that it is something inherent that lives inside of you. 

But she is not most people. 

\--

This can work. 

This can work. 

This can work. 

When you say it to her, you pretend you don’t see waves in her blue eyes. 

You are weak like that, sometimes. 

\--

The Airport is sterile and cold. 

When you turn away from her, you have to breathe in sharp and short. 

You focus ahead on taking step and weaving through the crowds. You have to move quickly, the time on your ticket now dangerously close. 

But that’s not why you don't look back. 

\--

You’ve had a headache all week and you know it’s because this case is fraught with small and intricate details and confusing medical terminology. In the first hour you’ve had off in what feels like months but is probably more like weeks, you’d tried to call Clarke just to see if maybe she understood some of it and your chest had squeezed in anticipation of that timbre of her voice when she was explaining something. 

but it had been far too late for her to answer. 

\--  
Your office is the biggest. 

The stakes are so much higher here and people expect so much more than ever before. All of a sudden people are looking to you and you think surely, you were never that wide-eyed and helpless. They knock on your office at all hours and ask you question after question and decisions fall to you and only you. 

Blame or Praise, it is yours and only yours. 

One night, after everyone has gone home, you sit alone in your big office and you don’t dare look at the pictures of Wicks birthday party that Clarke just sent you. They’d do nothing but distract you and there is a huge case file on your desk and there might finally be enough evidence to lock this wife beating fucker up. 

You turn your phone off and you don’t leave that office, the biggest office, until it’s starting to get light outside and then that’s only to get coffee from the 24 hour diner type thing down the road. You take a sip as the elevator carries you back up to your big office and you remember the last time you came over to Clarkes apartment with a cup of coffee from a dodgy convenience store and Clarke had turned her nose up at it ‘Lexa, please love yourself’ and had proceeded to pour the coffee down the drain ‘ I don’t care if you paid for it I’m not letting you drink dirt water’. You remember how she’d promised to make you another one herself and how you’d tried to kiss her good morning ‘no thank you please go and rinse your mouth out, in fact I think have a spare toothbrush somewhere’. 

The elevator pulls to a halt and the door opens and the office is starting to bustle again and you shake the memories away because out of everyone here your office is the biggest and there is a wife beating fucker waiting to be locked up, today. 

\--

She talks about her art, how she’s submitted an application to an up and coming magazine and how she likes her chances, this time. How she’s finished a new body of work that is basically just experimenting with colors of coffee and milk and the different shapes of cups. How she thought she should at least make the best out of having to take on another two shifts because the rent has gone up. She talks about her art and that night and every night afterwards 

_She would’ve made the same choice_

Becomes your lullaby  
\--

You win a case. 

It feels like flying. 

\--

She is asleep now, the tears just shimmering tracks across her cheek. 

You lie next to her and listen to her breathing. 

But they press down on your chest, her silent words. 

_I see green. I see green in your eyes. I see green in your eyes when I used to see grey and I don't know where to go from here._

\--  
You go to a bar on a Friday night with a few people who you might call friends if this wasn’t only the second time you’d ever seen them outside of work. 

They buy you drinks in a gesture of congratulations on ‘making that court room your bitch’ and you let their accented voices whirl around your tired head. 

“You got a man, Lexa?’ 

One of them asks

You shrug

“No, I don’t. 

He grimaces like what a shame but doesn’t think to ask anything further. You used to relish in explaining that actually, you have a girl, but that would mean saying her name and it would all make your chest ache far too much for a Friday night. 

\--

Days and Nights don't mean much anymore, light and dark don't have anything to do with when you sleep or work or eat. And yet anytime you think of calling her, she'd surely be sleeping. 

\--

Her words are flames 

_“Don't we deserve better than this?’_

But it is your own that settle like ash 

_“Maybe we do’_


	3. Chapter 3

_I don't know what to make of today  
If I'm doing something right,  
Why does every bone inside of me ache_   
\- Yuna

 

\--

“Lexa?"

“Hmm?’’ 

“No, no, nothing. You just kind of… zoned out." 

“I was just thinking about the…the Beckett case. I think it might be necessary to arrange another meeting with Mrs Beckett. Sometime this week. Assure her it won’t take longer than an hour but there’s a few more questions I want to ask."

“Okay, yep. Sure. Is there anything else?'' 

“No, thank you. Not right now."

She lingers at the door and for a moment it looks like she’s about to say something more. But a second later she turns and walks away, heels clacking down the hall.

 

\--

Two days ago, your father had sent you a strongly worded email about the lack of contact and despite everything, you are still slightly afraid of him. So when your mother calls you halfway through a meeting, you excuse yourself to the bathroom and it’s your fathers angry voice in your head, firmly ingrained from a childhood of mischief, that makes you answer. 

“Hi Mom'' 

“Hello Darling! Gosh, What time is it over there?" 

“About 2pm."

“I’m not catching you in the middle of something am I?"

“No, no, not at all. Was just having a late lunch break. Perfect timing."

“Oh good. I’m glad to hear you are taking the time for lunch. You’re prone to skipping meals, Alexandra and a lot of people don’t realise how important lunch is because breakfast obviously takes all the attention…’' 

You listen to her mother you from thousands of miles away and she natters on like she does and she tells you about the latest book she’s been reading and this great new TV show that her and your father have just watched the latest season of and she’s talking normalcy into your ear and you haven’t heard it in the longest time and - 

“Honey, are you okay?" 

And because she is your mother and everything changes except for that, you let out a choked sob 

“No, mom." 

\--

You are searching through one of the boxes that still sit heavy in your study. You are looking for an important file from one of Anya’s cases but this box is a total mess of old work and college stuff mixed in with a stack of apartment rental information. And so your Saturday evening becomes more about sipping from an oversized wine glass and sorting through this troublesome box. You are nearly finished, with everything neat, ordered and freshly labelled when you come across a small black leather notebook. 

You don’t recognise it immediately and contemplate throwing it away, are sure it will only be filled with useless appointment details and client phone numbers from cases long since done and dusted. But you open the front cover, because you've been taught to always double check and because this small black leather notebook, tucked in between a photocopy of a photocopy and a folder filled with empty folders, looks so completely out of place. 

_Property of Clarke Griffin_ is scrawled on the inside page. 

You spend the rest of the night sitting on the floor with your back resting against the leg of the desk.

You spend the rest of the night swigging straight from the bottle of Merlot. 

You spend the rest of the night tracing intricate, expert drawings of a person who looks a lot like what you see in the mirror. 

 

\--

The phone rings out. You sigh, hadn’t realised you were expecting so much until you feel the disappointment twist your stomach. You move to hang up but just at the last second your ear is full with a mildly disgruntled

“Hello?" 

You swallow. 

“Raven. It’s Lexa." 

You don’t need to see her face to know how it contorts. 

“I know, okay? I know that I have no right to–' 

“What the actual fuck, Lexa? This is so –'

‘Raven, just… you all hate me-' 

"Damn fucking straight" 

“And I understand that, god do I understand but…I made this decision with my…you know what it doesn’t even matter. I just need you to go and make sure that she’s okay. Just that… that she’s okay.’

You exhale into silence. The faint crackling in your ear the only indication that Raven hasn’t ended the call. 

When she finally speaks, her voice is hard

“We’re taking care of her, Lexa. _I’m taking care of her."_

Her words ring in your ears, collect like dust all around you:

“Its not your place anymore.” 

\--

Gus sends you an email to let you know he's moving out of the apartment and has found some of your things. He asks what he should do with the blue jacket, box of paints and silver necklace that were left in your room. 

You reply, simply, with a line or too that answer his question about how work is going, wishing him well in his new place and informing him that those particular items don't belong to you. 

You let him figure out what that really means. You are weak like that, sometimes. 

 

\--

 

“I’d like to take you up on that offer of extending my stay here, Mr Emerson’ 

He smirks and it makes your skin crawl but you keep your spine straight. 

“You’ve made the right choice, Lexa’ 

His eyes move back to his computer and you take it as the dismissal that it is. You leave his office and spend the rest of the day at your desk with forms, files and applications. 

It is not until later, when you are firmly encased in the silence and safety of your apartment that you let your shoulders slump. You kick off your shoes and unbutton the top button that’s been strangling you all day and move into the kitchen. 

_“You’ve made the right choice, Lexa"_

You don’t bother opening the fridge; know you won’t find anything worthwhile. Instead, you reach into the top cabinet and pull down a bottle of something dark and expensive. You pour yourself far too much and you know you’ll curse yourself for it tomorrow but tonight, you need to burn. 

_“You’ve made the right choice, Lexa"_

You spend the night sleepless and sore, wondering what cruel god it was that allowed a choice to be right and yet still be followed by mourning. 

 

\--  
It’s a Saturday night and you are lonely. 

You go out late and let something strong settle in the pit of your stomach and warm you up and it makes you tingle for - 

You find a girl with brown hair and charcoal eyes and she takes you back to her apartment. You collapse on the bed and she kisses her way down your neck, chest, stomach and she’s more gentle than you deserve so you beg and plead for harder harder harder. 

You kind of get there finally and it’s good for a second but the alcohol, it's the alcohol, makes you feel kind of sick so you distract yourself with kissing her neck and her chest and her stomach and the inside of her thighs until she screams loudly. It surprises you, how loud she is. 

She tugs you back up to face her and you mute her breathy compliments with your lips. You let yourself be held until her breathing evens out. 

\- 

The walk home is long and cold. You are drunk and lonely and now you feel wretched too. 

And despite it all, you still crave blonde hair and blue eyes, firm fingers and quiet sighs.


	4. Chapter 4

"We're both losing so who cares who fired the gun'   
\- St Jude, Florence and the Machine

\--  
You lose a case. 

It’s a big one. An important one. The loss resounds through the office, rattling the window and shaking the floors. 

The failure pinches at your spine and makes the office walls feel like they are closing in and so you pick up your jacket and walk out the door and no one even bothers to ask where you are going or when you will be back. 

You walk aimlessly for a little while and it’s probably the first time you’ve ever done anything remotely aimless and it feels makes your feet tingle in it’s strangeness. Eventually, you walk all the way to the Art gallery. It probably takes you an hour or so, mostly because you still haven’t quite learned the narrow streets that run like spider webs in this strange sprawling city. 

You spend the rest of the day wandering through every hall and you circle every room and you sit for hours in front of one piece in particular. 

You give yourself a day, a day to try and remind yourself that there is beauty and that some people are good. 

\--

Months pass. Months and Months and more after that. 

Days are just crosses on a calender, now. 

You work and work and work and you see sunrise and sunset from your office chair. 

Sometimes, you forget that there was anything before this room, this city, this case in front of you. 

Memories fade with time. You still wonder about feelings. 

\--

You don't have any friends here. Not really. There are people who you work well with and people who you respect. Some people who will have a beer with you on a Friday night and one girl who brings you a coffee exactly the way you like it after lunch even though you never ask for it...but Friend is a strong word.

Maybe a time will come when there isn't a price to pay. 

 

\--

You do a lot of hard things. 

You tell interns and employees that there was only a select few places at the firm and you know that no matter how hard they work, the numbers just won’t add up. 

You sigh in agreement when your mother assures you that its useless for you to fly out here, when your father will be right as rain in a few weeks, she is sure. 

You watch horrible, terrible men walk free with heads held high, the imprint of handcuffs on their wrists the only recognition of their evil. 

You tell women who were battered and bruised in more ways than one that you are sorry, that there is nothing you can do. 

You do a lot of hard things. 

And yet you still can’t stop yourself from dreaming about a girl you haven’t held or even seen in what feels like the longest time. 

\--  
One day, out of the blue, you get an email from R.Reyes. 

It’s empty, except for a single attachment. 

You open it to find that it's an article from one of those hipster magazines, all pastels and such, about coffee roasting techniques from around the globe. Your eyebrows pull in confusion until you scroll down a bit and see - 

_Illustrations by Clarke Griffin_

Your heart swells with pride and you can't help but smile, because of course Clarke would turn bored doodling between taking orders and cleaning tables into something truly beautiful. 

You ache, to see her eyes shine in front of you and to kiss her grinning cheeks. 

But its duller than before. You suppose that is all you can ask for. 

\--

There is nothing brave about leaving. 

Bravery, you think, as you sit on the plane and try to breathe, real bravery is coming home. 

\--

Your father is sicker than your mother let on over the phone. 

His coughs make it impossible to sleep. For him and for you. 

\--

Your mother finds you in the kitchen in the morning and she ushers you to sit down at the table by the window and you trace the initials you carved into it at age 8. She brings you a mug of coffee and sets it down in front of you and there are thousands of questions swimming in her eyes but she sighs instead 

“You don’t look well, my darling’ 

“Just jet lag, Mom. Everything is fine. It’s lovely to be back’ 

You swallow the coffee and its bitter in your mouth.

\--

And then, after three days, you are weak. 

You go to the café. 

\--

When you see her, you feel everything. 

But 

it’s been too long.


End file.
